Ryu might have the shoryuken, but it can't match the power of someone who floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee. This street art piece in Paris was by COMBO. His other pop culture mash-ups are great, many of which are political.
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I enjoyed Jon Shireman's "Broken Flower" photo series where he soaked flowers in liquid nitrogen and then snapped the shattered result.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=3n3HQ9uge0g#t=69s I can't believe I'm just finally getting around to seeing this music video tribute to the Asian youth and pop culture in the 626 area code of San Gabriel Valley to the sounds of Wiz Khalifa and Snoop Dogg's "Young, Wild, Free." It's pretty damn catchy. Who wants to collaborate on a response on behalf of 32nd and Broadway in New York City?
Obviously inspired by Dog Shaming, this derivative single serve Tumblr is a bit more esoteric but Philosopher Shaming is still pretty entertaining for any pedant.
Get these miniature interplanetary lollipops over at Etsy by Vintage Confections.
In jest of Clint Eastwood's bizarre speech at the 2012 RNC where spoke to an empty chair on stage and gave birth to a new meme, "Eastwooding," someone added an empty chair to the actor's cutout which overlooks the Glendale Freeway.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1C_40B9m4tI&feature=player_embedded What do you think of artist Daniel Wurtzel's experiential installation "Magic Carpet" where a red fabric twists and floats about in a vortex of air? For me?
It was one of those days when it's a minute away from snowing and there's this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it. Right? And this bag was just dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. That's the day I realized that there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video's a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember... I need to remember... Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can't take it, and my heart is just going to cave in.
2 art directors and 28 artists collaborated to create this deck of cards featuring some of the players that contributed to the economic crash.
I wish Penn Station still looked like this instead of the utter eye sore that it is today. Adding Port Authority and the monstrous towering vomit that is the Verizon building to this eye sore list.
ET's 
This heartbreaking letter was written in 1586 in Korea by a pregnant widow and found in the tomb and resting on the chest of her deceased husband Eung-Tae Lee who apparently died at the age of 30. Here's the English translation:
To Won's Father
June 1, 1586
You always said, "Dear, let's live together until our hair turns gray and die on the same day." How could you pass away without me? Who should I and our little boy listen to and how should we live? How could you go ahead of me?
How did you bring your heart to me and how did I bring my heart to you? Whenever we lay down together you always told me, "Dear, do other people cherish and love each other like we do? Are they really like us?" How could you leave all that behind and go ahead of me?
I just cannot live without you. I just want to go to you. Please take me to where you are. My feelings toward you I cannot forget in this world and my sorrow knows no limit. Where would I put my heart in now and how can I live with the child missing you?
Please look at this letter and tell me in detail in my dreams. Because I want to listen to your saying in detail in my dreams I write this letter and put it in. Look closely and talk to me.
When I give birth to the child in me, who should it call father? Can anyone fathom how I feel? There is no tragedy like this under the sky.
You are just in another place, and not in such a deep grief as I am. There is no limit and end to my sorrows that I write roughly. Please look closely at this letter and come to me in my dreams and show yourself in detail and tell me. I believe I can see you in my dreams. Come to me secretly and show yourself. There is no limit to what I want to say and I stop here.
Also found in his tomb were a pair of sandals woven in part with the wife's own hair.
The Venice Biennale commissioned artists Julian Charrierre and Julius Von Bismarcke to transform pigeons in the city into a more colorful variety.
The lucky birds have been coloured using an extraordinary conveyor-belt mechanism that was first tested in Copenhagen. After landing in a box that looks a little like a CCTV camera, they are pushed through a system where they are (apparently) harmlessly spray-painted and then let out the other side in a strange airbrush metamorphosis.
Prettier to look at but still damn annoying pigeons.
There has to be a video of this somewhere out there and if so, I will be eternally grateful to whoever can send me a gif of Warren Buffet getting at it with that big paddle. [vimeo https://vimeo.com/33698394] The Stanford Center for Cognitive and Neurobiological Imaging and filmmaker Brent Hoff hosted the first annual "Love Competition" where 7 people, ages ranging from 10 to 75, "...spent five minutes in an fMRI machine, thinking deeply about love and allowing the imaging technology to measure activity in their dopamine, serotonin and ocytocin/vasopressin pathways."
Brent's short film documenting these participants reaction to this experiment makes this worth watching. Who would you think about?
Pitch perfect by McSweeney's (as usual).
Sutro: The early bloomer withers first. You peaked with a portrait of a cowboy sleeping on a bench at LAX, setting your popularity expectations unreasonably high. Every photo you have taken or will take since then will be nothing more than an increasingly desperate attempt to recreate the magic of that exquisitely lit lone ranger.
Open invite for stalkers: More of my Instagram photos collected here.
The New York Times "recruited historians and museum curators to identify 50 objects that could embody the narrative of New York."
I don't know the original source for this (let me know if you do), but this data visualization of the Apollo 11 landing site compared to a baseball field is pretty great. Click 
Submitted by Richard Storm to the New York Times Metropolitan Diary:
The wealthy, pretty people are all at the beach, leaving the rest of us in an ordinary city with manageable streets. Soon they’ll be back, with vacation-reading book reviews and complaints about how that place has really gone off, filling the roads with goldenrod cabs, and we will know, truer than falling leaves, that summer is over.
Neal Stephenson, Neil Armstrong (RIP), and Neil Gaiman. Missing: Neil Diamond, Neil Young, Neil Patrick Harris, and Neil from accounting.